Monday, December 10, 2018

Which major Landscape Design rule do you see, below?
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Which subsidiary Landscape Design rules do you see, below?
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If you had this single garden pic, below, to teach a Garden Design course, what does your hand-out look like? What are its headings?

Pic, above, here.
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Great wisdom, above.
.Choose a pot so wonderful, it never needs planting.
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What else about this pot, above, must be copied in your garden? For every pot, focal point, and piece of garden furniture you consider, ask yourself, "Is this piece so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"
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Another bit of wisdom from, above?
.A garden designed to look beautiful in winter, will be beautiful all year.
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Best Garden Design book ever written, is titled, The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey.
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How best to site groupings of plantings? Contrast foliage textures, colors, sizes, contrast shapes of plant silhouettes, mix evergreen plantings with deciduous, create architecture of a room/s with ceiling (sky)-walls-floors, include art/function/change thru the seasons, site focal points on axis from main views of the house, plantings must include scent/blooms/fall color/berries, plantings must be deer resistant/drought tolerant/bug-fungus proof and cycle with interest throughout the year.
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This is fun, from a single garden pic we've already started a nice Garden Design course.
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Urn, above, is a delight, in memory at my own stupidity, ahead of epiphany. How do you think I was able to have an empty pot epiphany? Seriously, anyone out there had the Empty Pot Epiphany too? Found a quote this year my mom wrote down, "Genius may have its limitations but stupidity is not handicapped."
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Yes, these bits of Garden Design are this important, for me to repeat, repeat, repeat..... If you don't have The Garden In Winter, plenty of used at good prices with the link.
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Copied a simple historic garden room, in our ca. 1900 home this year, a life moment arrived recently, and beyond measure that garden room, and Nature, tended, in great love, not only a life moment, but the entirety of my life. Why do you want to Garden Design? I know why I do, it's for those moments, knowing another may never come. And that is fine, what has been received already is beyond measure.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Best epiphany about the garden in winter? Designing the garden for winter is superior to other seasons. A garden beautiful in February is beautiful all year.
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Rosemary Verey's book, The Garden in Winter, is your source for this epiphany if you're in a bit of doubt.
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In addition to winter being the best season to create a Garden Design, another realm is included, simplicity. Into those realms, considered micro, is the full blown macro garden in winter. Your life.
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Winter's pace is meant to be. Winter's events in the garden are meant to be. Pining for the glories of spring in winter? Not me, never have. Winter is deep strength in the garden. A season controlling how we dress, our circadian cycle, our activity levels, and what the activities are, and more.

At the front end, I knew Garden Design, below, was not for me, my station in life. Middle class, subdivision, working for a living. Ten good staff, but they are all on my own hands. Could not have been more wrong. Instead of seeing the Garden Design, below, I saw station-in-life. Guess what else I didn't see, below, at the front end? Yep, the garden in winter, how to design her.
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Pic, above, here.
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Now, this is what I know, below. Garden Design does not vary for station in life, it varies by your intensity of perception, whispering the details, taking them for your own. In the taking, lives are born.

Pic, above, here.
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Garden design, both pics, above, are the same. Both pics are a complete garden design class for the garden in winter.

Pic, above, here.
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Studying historic gardens across the globe for decades, I've been into many art museums in different countries too. Having the art of Providence, above, in my own garden? Priceless. Finding these scenes upon a winter's day, a casual walk/perusal, makes time disappear. Timelessness of other realms become the reality, the unconscious begins its serious work of creativity, grace, joy, peace, putting connections together.
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Pic, above, here.

If you don't have a garden work area yet, put thought to it in winter.

Pic, above, here.
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The garden in winter is inside your home too. Mainly from the views looking out, which is where every garden begins. Bring the garden inside physically, all year, especially in winter.

Pic, above, here.
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Bulbs usually go on sale in winter, cheap/easy to pot. Adore this grow box, below, never seen one before.

Pic, above, here.
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Bringing a few plants inside for winter, below. Finally, have done this for myself this year. Take heart, I'm 30 years into it. Life was never conducive to interior plants, took the plunge in December.
Discovered a trick, not pleasant at first, about a winter's interior plant table.
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Found at local thrift store for a song, that table, when I moved into my house 2.5 years ago, was stowed with the cats in a back room. A few fur balls later, the table had a bad side. No problem, brought table out and put that side next to a wall.
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Life conspired further, work travel. My pet sitter, cats/chickens, is the best. But adding topiaries to her duties did not seem polite. Pulled a leaf up on the mahogany table, placed copper trays filled with water, from Smith/Hawken, for humidity, watered pots/foliage, left for over a week.
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All was great with chicks/cats and topiaries. Alas the mahogany dropleaf table. Unpleasant to be honest, but I've ruined the table. Took a couple of days to get over the fact of ruining a good piece of furniture. Get over it I did !
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Whoever gets the table after me, has the choice to keep using it roughly, or refinish. It's solid, no veneer. Until then, I have a fabulous interior winter plant table. Then I noticed other winter plant tables, below, and they are spotted just the same as mine. On trend, go me.

Pic, above, here.
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Bringing plants inside for winter, below, pay attention to their containers. I found almost the exact wood container, below, about 3 years ago. Bought it as a gift for a friend, she brings plants inside. Then I moved, who knew where that planter went. Once my topiary order arrived last December I rummaged through the basement. Found that container, below. Now it's mine, no thought of giving it away. Found a classic antique plant stand for it at an estate sale last month too.

Pic, above, here.
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Your interior plants don't need to be repotted if you have a variety of soup tureens, clay pots, baskets, other weird containers, to slip them into, below.
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Soup tureens with a crack or chip are easy to find, and cheap. Perfect for interior plants.

Pic, above, here.
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Bunny Mellon is famous for her topiary use inside, below, all year. Discovered recently she liked the idea of topiaries after seeing them in ancient Roman artwork. I've copied her, topiaries, below, are a copy of her, and next maybe you.

Pic, above, here.
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The garden in winter, at its best, below. How many years have I done these, but outside on my winter patio? Decades. Better, branches are easy to procure, free.

Pic, above, here.
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The garden in winter, below. The pot could be black plastic from the nursery. Doesn't matter. Wicker goes with everything.

Pic, above, here.
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Have found several of these containers, below, at thrift stores thru the years. Line with plastic, add soil, poke a few holes, plant the bulbs. Done. Stagger planting times, leave outside, bring inside when started to grow, or skip the outside part. Don't overthink.

Pic, above, here.
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Perhaps the least understood garden design, for me, at the front end, below. Glad through-a-glass-darkly became clear. It's about all year beauty, ease of management, living life in the garden, not living life having to work in the garden.

Pic, above, here.
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Giving a Garden in Winter talk tomorrow, handout, below. Pay no attention to the plants, it's for our zone 8a. Plants are first on the handout, yet the most important Garden in Winter facts are at the bottom. It's all about the Garden Design.
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Have a lovely powerpoint to go with it.
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It's in a historic church 1 county over. A large group, and active. More than gardening, this group is proactive politically, historically, conservation, agriculturally, planning/zoning, and etc. It's amazing what you learn at Garden Club. If you think it's all about gardening, it's not.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

Monday, October 9, 2017

At the front end of planning your garden, from personal experience, if there is a problem with the outcome, those problems reside in you, not the garden.
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Assumptions about where to begin, "What plants will I have?", wildly, achingly, charmingly, sweetly, misplaced. Going a step further, I did, decades ago, realized my initial assumptions beyond arrogant. Worse, arrogance aimed at Nature. There for me to wield. Ha.
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Before we have language, we see Nature. For most that unspoken language, remains throughout life. Seeing through a glass darkly, thinking as a child type of stuff.
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Getting the horticulture degree, still, did not unlock the door to creating a beautiful garden, understanding Nature's language. Off to Europe for decades studying historic gardens. Designing/installing gardens all the while as vocation. Dots on the Garden Design map emerged, some connected. Map is not territory.
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Having lunch at a client's farm, decades from my starting dot, standing inside her kitchen, looking through to the potager, a dot, outside the realm of Garden Design, appeared, and connected all the dots. The master dot. Epiphanies are a drug of choice. This one simple, seen since birth, yet zero comprehension for decades.
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Providence never separated ornamental horticulture from agriculture. Man's folly, made the separation. Separation dot date? Onset of the Industrial Revolution, late 19th century. Until then we lived with Nature. The dot was clear. Without it, death.
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"The eighteenth century was the culmination of thousands of years of agrarian society. The nineteenth century would bring in the Industrial Revolution to America. Until then, most societies based their economies on the raising and trading of crops, so nature was always in control. People measured the work day by the rising and setting of the sun, and one hailstorm or flood could ruin a year's work. Everyday life was an ongoing struggle against nature.
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Historically when people have been able to raise enough crops and food to sustain a comfortable life, they have challenged nature even further by turning their outdoor environment into a living art form, a pleasure garden. Most societies have even given the garden religious significance.
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A garden is a balance between measured, human control on one hand and wild, mystical nature on the other. It is the place where humans attempt to create their particular vision of an idealized order of nature and culture. A garden is not just the opposition of unpredictable nature and organized society; it is the mediating space between them. Human intellect, intuition, nurture, and spirit meld together in a garden. Since culture shapes both the form and meaning of a garden at a particular place and time....." Barbara Sarudy, Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805.

How little can you have in your Garden Design? When I design a garden, the last question I ask myself, "What can I take away, and it holds together?"
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Inside a garden, above. Outside a garden, below.
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Ironically, at every price point client, I'm told, "I don't want to spend a lot of money. It must be easy to take care of." These gardens, above/below. Get it right. Macro and micro. Master dot. Maximum pollinator habitat exists where hi density meets low density. No, this garden isn't agriculture for man, it is agriculture for Nature. Hence, us.
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Feed the bees. Without them we perish. Basic. Simple. Nature knows, we forgot. More to this Nature 'stuff', Barbara Saludy alluded to it richly, above. Cadence. Will get to that another day.

Pic, above, here.
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One of the most potent Garden Designs you'll see, above. Tara Turf, meadow mowed at differing heights, with a mix of plantings suitable to the zone, attracting myriad insects, attracting myriad mammals, (reptiles too, love my lizards), in turn attracting different genres of insects, mammals to the hedging and wild wood beyond. Nature in full cycle, master dot included, high density mixed with low density. While providing for property value increases, HVAC expense decreases, less maintenance, no chemicals, no irrigation. Easily maintained with unskilled labor. Of course the goal is to maintain as much as you can yourself, placing mind/body/soul into Nature's realm, Nature's cadence. As long as you can.
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Designing gardens, I design simple. As requested. After the concept plan, it's normal to receive requests for more 'stuff'. Here's the negotiation. Put this plan in first, if you want more later, easy. Of course the final plan always includes a few of those extras. If I don't put them in, the client will liberally dose the garden themselves. Better to be like Barney Fife, Nip It.
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With a proper garden design, epiphanies daily. Epiphanies that will change your life. How could Nature not do that for you? Example? It's almost fall, when the trees drop their leaves, baring themselves naked ahead of winter, they are being fed by what they let go of.
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Meditate on that.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Winter. Design your garden for winter, and it will be pretty all year.
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Terra cotta pot, below, stopped my eyes/heart/head. Hmm. Never seen this particular Garden Design effect. In this particular moment, below, the terra cotta looks like a movie effect, not real, injected artificially.
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These are the moments, exactly this. Design, plant, time passes, wait for the exact right weather event, poof voila, you have, below.
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These are my moments of choice. Dancing with Nature. And knowing it, while in the dance. In the moment of awareness, feet are not tethered to Earth, time no longer a force, only the oneness of pure atonement. Joseph Campbell writes of it much better, "If you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere."

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Time to begin hunting/gathering for winter gardening.
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Incredible silhouettes, below, and packing a punch with a strand of lights.

In my garden shed are several balled strands of white lights, extension cords, urns, and in our woods, plenty of sticks/branches/greenery.
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Mechanics & ingredients accounted for. Now, pure pleasure vision questing where to place them.
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Yes, will leave the lights on all nite.
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This is your heads-up. If you enjoy the anticipation of a new garden layer, as much as I do, a new layer has arrived, just now, sublime.
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Garden & Be Well, XO T
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Would be fun seeing how many ships sail from this port. Better, their structural mechanics.
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Pics Deborah Silver.

Friday, July 8, 2016

Pulling the gate/columns forward, below, welcomes you from the wide world into their private world, elongates the entry, and adds a foyer to the front door. Painting the columns same as the house adds them to the footprint of the home, enlarging the home's territory.
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Painting the columns a different color, or if they were stone, still adds good features, excepting they become part of the garden, not the house.
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Great wisdom leaving the tops of the columns empty.
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Front door & light fixtures chosen well, they make the house seem taller.
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Note the gutters, below. Copper color, not the brick color. Well done.
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Roof, below, is like jewelry for the house.
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Repetition of square shapes, below, highlights the fabulousity of the tall round urns at the windows. Super contrast.
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This garden design has been done for centuries. Have seen it on several continents, and at all price points. Done it myself, more than once. Looks fresh & new with each reincarnation.
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Even the front door handle was chosen with care. Drapes vs. blinds, again, well done.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Design your garden, 1st, from inside your home. Design your garden, 1st, for the depths of winter.
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If your garden is gorgeous in winter, it is gorgeous all year.
.The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey is perhaps the best Garden Design book.

Pic, above, from my previous garden. 30 years, creating a cottage garden. Moved no plants/field stone/bricks when I left last May, only brought focal points & potted plantings & 7 large quartz stones. Weeks later, seeing the pile of cottage garden 'stuff' at our ca. 1900 American farmhouse I knew it was inappropriate. Beloved had his large work truck and 5 of his men on site, I let them gather 2 truckloads for the thrift store. I stood and pointed and watched the bits/pieces making up a garden seen on TV, in magazines/books, tours, drift away. Bits/pieces that made up my life. Nothing to be done but take swift action. Impossible to live a new life chapter, dragging past chapters.
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The view, above, is now all lawn.
.Christopher Lloyd said, The garden dies when the gardener dies.
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Because money was nonexistent during early decades at my cottage garden I volunteered at garden symposiums, to get inside free. Wildly, it was Providence placing me where I should be. How else to have had lunch & traipse gardens with Christopher Lloyd when he came to lecture, how else to have had lunch & traipse gardens with Rosemary Verey when she came to lecture?
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Garden & Be Well, XO T

More regions of the brain activated, than sitting in the office on a computer.

Designing on the computer would be like playing the violin by hooking it up to wires and tapping on the computer keyboard to get the sweetest sounds played. Not !

Whence my creativity, I know. And, nurture.

Within that zone of creativity, is, I imagine, what others gain from cocaine. Don't know, never tried it. Don't need to, got better.

"Some get a kick from cocaine**I'm sure that if I took even one sniffThat would bore me terrific'ly tooYet I get a kick out of you." Cole Porter

Each time a plan completed the awe in time. Felt like seconds, yet hours passed. Little in life allows me to forget time, or hunger.
." My general formula for my students is "Follow your bliss." Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.

Joseph CampbellThe Power of Mythpp. 120, 149 "..Great fear, indeed. Campbell should have added some in your life add to that fear, not trusting the path you've chosen. .My father was horrified at my career choice, and embarrassed. And vocal. My engineering degree unused, the horticulture degree supporting me..What I do for a living, and how I do it, are the best life choices, for me. Bucking my dad literally made me ill at times. .Best choice I've ever made, and the hardest..Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics from jobsite this spring.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client,local/on-line.

Monday, January 20, 2014

Seating to create a gathering spot, figs for summer shade/winter sun over the benches, drystack stone wall cut into a slight slope forcing foot traffic into defined directions, formal boxwood framing pastoral views, tapering stone wall allowing only small machinery into the pasture from this direction, gravel terrace ready for men-trucks-heavy equipment, horses, or a catered soiree for 100.
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And, of course, it must all look a century old, be easy to maintain, and provide interest 24/7.
.When something appears simple, it rarely is. Same is true of people.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic at a jobsite last week.
.Do you know the maximum pollinator habitat, above? Seriously, can you verbalize what creates the best pollinator habitat above? Answer at bottom.
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Being simple requires each of the decades I've been learning about gardens. Better, being simple in a garden, takes me where Joseph Campbell says our eternity is. Ironic, in this American life/era, to have found my bliss in work.
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Friday, March 29, 2013

From her first week cracked out, above, she's loved to be held & have the bottoms of her feet rubbed.

Don't let her divert you, though she is a beautiful girl. Can you tell me what the 'great divide' is between interior & landscape design?

Laura, above, feeling a bit left out, no pun intended, when I was shooting pics in the garden yesterday.

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Don't let Laura divert you either. What is this gulf between interior & garden design?

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Top pic, exposes the gulf beautifully. Makes me proud. Pleased with the many layers of complexity put into its simplicity.

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This 'difference' is critical. Especially for interior decorators to know. Yet, many garden designers do not know it either.

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Gardens must be designed for winter.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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A garden designed for winter will be beautiful all year. Gardens designed for spring will be gorgeous in spring. You are in luck, The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey is affordable again. They must have had a reissue.

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Will totally skip: the finial, gate, color, gravel, axis, slope contained with stone, contrasting textures, form, flow, repetition, eyes to the sky, focal point, subsidiary focal point, fake geometry, and how many neighbors houses you would see without this bit of garden. Designing for winter, yes, that's what you must know first.

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How to test your garden in winter. Are pics of it worthy of a magazine cover? Book cover?